I didn’t get a chance to do a week 14 report but it would have been minimal since I only saw the Rock/Desert Dogs game. I did watch the Rock/Seals game later on but that’s it. This week however, there were eight games and I watched a good chunk of them. I even had multiple games on at the same time for a while – Rush/Bandits on one screen and Roughnecks/Swarm on the other, since both games were tied in the final minutes of the fourth quarter. I muted Buffalo while Georgia was in OT, and as soon as the Swarm scored the game-winner, I killed that feed and went back to Buffalo and managed to see the game-winner there as well.

Awesome

Land acknowledgements

I can’t say I’ve heard them all, but I believe all NLL teams have a land acknowledgement in their broadcasts. The Rock and Desert Dogs (the only home teams I’ve seen live in the past few years) each do one in the arena as well; I assume the other teams do this too and I also assume it’s the same as the one on the broadcast. I find it interesting to hear the different messages from the different teams: which nations are located where the teams are, and how the announcements are written. Some are more generic, naming the nations and acknowledging that we are playing on their traditional land, while others are more detailed. The Rock acknowledgement is read by captain Challen Rogers (an indigenous player himself) and explicitly names the “Dish With One Spoon” agreement between various First Nations in the 18th century as well as a treaty between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

I’m glad the NLL is doing this, as well as hosting various Indigenous Heritjosh age nights throughout the league and not only supporting the Every Child Matters movement, but making it a priority.

Bandits/Rush

This game was quite possibly the closest game in NLL history. The final score was 15-14 in OT (for the Bandits, in case you missed it), and the game itself was awesome. Part of the awesomeness of the game was that it was tied at every number from 0-14. Every single goal in the game, all 29 of them, either tied the game or broke a tie. It follows that neither team had a lead of more than one, and neither team scored more than two goals in a row. The fourteen game-tying goals sets a league record. This was no “game of runs” as is frequently said about lacrosse, this was a tight battle with pretty much zero momentum on either side. Neither defense was particularly strong, and neither goalie had a great game either. But there was lots of offense, a number of highlight reel goals, and obviously a lot of tension as any time one team tried to grab the game and run with it, the other team said NO.

Josh Byrne

If you weren’t able to watch this game, I suggest you go to the NLL’s facebook page and find the video for the game. All (or at least most) games can be found there. Even if you just watch for the amazing goals: Chris Cloutier fought off a couple of defenders and shot between his legs and scored, and just a few minutes later Josh Byrne jumped in the air with his back to the net, caught a pass, somehow twisted around in the air, and shoveled the ball backwards into the top corner. Unbelievable.

Mammoth/Rock

This was a game between a 10-2 team in first place overall, and a 4-8 team in second-last. But for half the game, you couldn’t tell which was which. Dillon Ward had some trouble early in the first quarter, allowing four Rock goals while the Mammoth were kept off the board. But the Rock offense seemed to fall asleep in the second and third quarters while the Mammoth woke up. Colorado came back to tie the game twice and took two leads, which they held for about half the third quarter before Dan Lintner scored his third of the game in the dying seconds of the third to tie it again. Colorado outscored the Rock 7-3 in those two quarters. But the fourth looked more like the first, as Colorado was held scoreless again while the Rock woke up and scored five.

Nick Rose was excellent as usual, and made a couple of “oh-my-god-how-did-he-stop-that” saves. Ward, like the rest of the Mammoth, was solid in the middle two quarters (making a couple of OMG saves of his own) and a bit shaky in the first and fourth.

It was nice to see Joey Cupido get a goal in his hometown of Hamilton. He clearly had a bunch of family in the crowd, as his goal got more cheers than other Mammoth goals.

Goaltending

It was a great weekend for goalie battles: I mentioned Rose vs. Ward in Hamilton above, but Hill vs. Origlieri in San Diego and Damude vs. Higgins in Philadelphia were both great goalie battles as well. Hill was having a pretty good night but when you’re spending half the game killing penalties (see Not Awesome below), you’re already at a disadvantage. Origlieri’s career best season continues, and is looking like a solid second place in the Goaltender of the Year race right now. On Sunday afternoon, Damude and Higgins both played incredible games (both under 10 goals against in >60 minutes and both over 80% save percentage), and it was unfortunate that one of them had to lose.

Vinc vs. Scigliano and Del Bianco vs. Dobson were each games that featured two great goaltenders and both went to OT, but from what I saw, each of these was more a battle of two goaltenders that weren’t having great nights.

Connor Farrell joins the Bandits

With Max Adler injured, the Bandits have had Ian MacKay handling their face-offs this season. But it’s not his specialty, and in a league where you have the likes of Withers, Baptiste, Ierlan, Nardella, and other face-off specialists, the Bandits decided they needed to upgrade that part of their game, and allow MacKay go back to being awesome at every other part of the game. This week they signed Connor Farrell purely to take faceoffs. Farrell has been a faceoff specialist in the PLL for years and while he’s never played an NLL game, the Bandits are his fourth NLL team. He was drafted by the Riptide in 2019, then signed by the Seals, then traded to the Knighthawks but never made it into a game. So Friday was his NLL debut, where he won 27 out of 33 faceoffs (a Withersian 81.8%) and became an instant fan favourite in Buffalo.

There were a few plays where he won the faceoff and then immediately dropped the ball, got it taken from him, or in one case, ran straight to the net and took an ill-advised shot. Faceoff win and then instant turnover, thus negating the faceoff win. But it was the guy’s first-ever NLL game, possibly his first-ever box lacrosse game, and playing in front of those Bandits fans cheering hard for you has got to get you fired up so I’ll give him a break. He was brought in to do a job and he did that job very well.

I’m still in the “Faceoffs don’t matter in general” camp, but I can’t deny that the top five teams in the league have a faceoff specialist, and the bottom six don’t. I think the Bandits defense has been their main problem this year (they’ve given up 13+ goals in eight straight games, though they’ve won four of those), and adding Farrell won’t help that other than allowing MacKay to not worry about faceoffs. But MacKay said himself after Friday’s game that Farrell is a big locker room guy and is well liked by his teammates and the fans. There’s something to be said for adding someone like that to your lineup.

Not Awesome

Halifax discipline

During a short interview at the end of the second quarter (I think), Halifax head coach Mike Accursi said that they needed to work on discipline in the second half and stay out of the box. Well, it seems that that message was not very well communicated, or not very well received. Jesse Gamble and Luc Magnan took coincidental minors in the second but otherwise, the Seals took three penalties in the game while the Thunderbirds took thirteen. Most of these were unnecessary and emotional. Cody Jamieson was pissed about something and slashed Jesse Gamble in the leg, a blatant slash right in front of the ref. Then he got even more pissed and likely swore at the ref after that penalty was called, getting himself an additional penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. At the same time, Tyson Bell got a dead ball foul penalty, and since Dawson Theede was already in the box serving a major for roughing, San Diego was given a penalty shot. The Thunderbirds managed to get away with it, this time, as Warren Hill stopped the penalty shot and only one goal was scored on the subsequent 5-on-3.

San Diego scored seven power play goals in that game. It’s not like the game was completely out of hand and Halifax had no chance of coming back, but you can’t do that if you’re constantly killing penalties. I know it’s easy to say and hard to do, but you gotta keep your emotions in check and stay out of the box.

TSN Feeds dropping

During Friday night’s games, everything dropped on TSN+ for 5-10 minutes. This wasn’t an NLL problem – college basketball, curling, tennis, all the feeds were unavailable. Eventually some came back; for a while I couldn’t watch the Roughnecks/Swarm game but Rush/Bandits was working. Luckily the rest got fixed before the exciting finishes to both of those games.

Of course this was not awesome so I need to mention it here, but the feeds have been solid for me all season so Friday night was an anomaly.